So someone is going to jail for it?

Because if ordinary people do something that is very very illegal, they do.

Seriously, "now" ?

These types of vans exist for a decade at least. Maybe not this specific model from that specific manufacturer, but I don't think that's the point here.

Yes, your government is spying on you. While hiding from you some of its most serious and worrying internals. Don't we just love how we are the people and in charge? lol.

Not strange if you've ever played a fighting game against someone not into computer games. They learn quickly that by just mashing buttons randomly they can often get a win without actually learning anything about the game. Same principle.

Of course they didn't. The name of the game is "disrupting an industry". Because on paper and in investor pitches, everything is straightforward, simple, and was practically waiting for them.

That reality is more messy, has more edge cases, doesn't always follow your process, is something you don't tell the investors and don't consider in your service until you've had the chance to cash out.

It's almost as if having humans around can sometimes have advantages.

But I'm sure this'll just be seen to add one more robot to the robot taxi. A humanoid co-pilot bot?

That's not an argument.

"Yeah, that guy is dead now. We have a pretty solid idea who did it. But not sure if that'll make him alive again, so let's not bother with catching them."

Your link - seriously?

"Tobacco giants say"? Dude, they said that smoking is actually healthy for a few decades. I'd trust my cat around buckets full of her favorite treat more than those companies.

Because the cost to society is paid not by the smokers but by all of us. And health care costs are only the tip of the iceberg.

There's no culling here. Both doom scrolling and smoking kill you so slowly that evolutionary it doesn't matter.

"Games are competing with every other option for spending your leisure time and money, and the competition is brutal." --John Carmack

I had never thought about games in this way before. When I fell in love with Doom (and gaming) as a teenager, I didn't have any social media & smartphones competing for my time, because they didn't exist. Lots more time for gaming. The games back then were made to reward you for investing more time in the game itself. There was a joy in it, discovering all the hidden places that rewarded you with power-ups. Finish a level only to find out you found 87% of the secrets? That's when the OCD in your brain kicks in, you re-load the level, and hit spacebar on every inch of wall space you can can muster until you find that hidden BFG-9000.

Today's "games" don't try to reward you in that classic sense anymore. They've turned gameplay into a casino, where you grind away for six hours hoping for that rare-item drop. They can't beat the addictive components that make up social media, so instead they incorporated some of them into the gameplay...If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess. The only winning move is not to play.

The endless scroll is predatory at every moment.

It even reloads when you stop for a while. Switch to a different tab, do something else for five minutes, come back - it reloads and refreshes everything. Why? Because that activates a primal fear in your brain that you're losing something, missing something that might've been important, so your instinct is to NOT divert your attention elsewhere.

In theory I would agree, but the issue here is that social media platforms intentionally compromise your ability to make decisions. That's what the addictive pattern is all about. You could at any moment decide to stop scrolling and get back to work or life - but everything in there is designed so that the decision is made for you and bypasses any critical thinking paths in your brain.

And while I'm the first to agree the politicians are sleazebags and are the first ones that need much tougher regulation and laws, it's a fact that laws in this area actually do work. Anti-smoking laws have reduced smoking, for example.

Someone hasn't flown in a while.

I don't click the cheapest price. What happened is that the major airlines have copied some (not all) of the budget airline shit. Luggage used to be included, now it's an extra - which causes people to bring carry-on to the max instead, which leads to the overhead compartments always being full.

Yeah, good point. No, wait, that's complete bullshit.

I've taken a number of trips on business class in the past years. What you get in business class today is what you got in economy class 20, 25 years ago.

You know what, you may actually be right if you compare multi-thousand halfway-around-the-world intercontinental flights. I've never flown to Australia, so I can't compare that. I'm talking about shorter flights (a few hours) which I do frequently and where I can compare. We might both be right.

So... ordinary airport before enshitification ?

Air travel used to be pretty cool. Now absolutely every part of it is annoying. Especially the booking and its 25 upsale offers.

A few years more of this and you'll have to book business just to get a seat and fresh air.

Probably.
But the mirrors, for example, are made by Zeiss. Lots of parts are from the supply chain and ASML doesn't even HAVE their secrets.

You are right that some industrial espionage could be useful. I just say it's not as useful as most people would assume (which is basically the Hollywood plot of "steal this secret and we can copy it"). Nah. You can find on the Internet how a nuclear bomb is made. But it takes a lot more than a print-out to actually make one, and a couple of those steps are genuinely hard.